This video contains actual news clips of the "information" leading up to the Iraq war. Language may not be suitable for work.

On his Pressing Issues blog, journalist Greg Mitchell wrote that The Washington Post killed a piece about media failures in covering the Iraq War. The story, “Reviewing This Week’s Mea Culpas on Iraq: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly,” ran in full on The Nation’s website. Mitchell says that Post killed his piece because it didn’t offer sufficient “broader analytical points or insights,” and takes issue with the fact the Post instead published an article by Paul Farhi that claimed the media “didn’t fail.”

Here's an excerpt from Mitchell's "Reviewing This Week’s Mea Culpas on Iraq: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly":

Now let’s flash forward to this past two weeks, when Iraq (remember Iraq?) re-emerged in the news and opinion sections. But anyone who expected that hair shirts would come into fashion must have been sadly disappointed. The “mea culpas” would not be “maxima.” First, those who accepted some blame.

LIMITED HANGOUT STRATEGY David Frum, the former Bush speechwriter, wrote well over a thousand words at the Daily Beast describing multiple reasons for promoting the war before very briefly concluding, “Those of us who were involved—in whatever way—bear the responsibility.” While adding: “I could have set myself on fire in protest on the White House lawn and the war would have proceeded without me.” Jonathan Chait at New York offered regrets for backing the war but defended believing in Saddam’s WMD and recalled that “supporting the war was cool and a sign of seriousness.” And: “The people demanding apologies today will find themselves being asked to supply apologies of their own tomorrow.”

YOUNG AND DUMBER Ezra Klein apologized in a Bloomberg column, at great length, for supporting the war--when he was eighteen, and “young and dumb.” Charles P. Pierce at Esquire replied, “It is encouraging that he no longer believes in fairy tales.”

MEA (AND A LOT OF OTHERS) CULPA Stephen Hadley, Bush’s national security adviser, wrote at Foreign Policy: “It never occurred to me or anyone else I was working with, and no one from the intelligence community or anyplace else ever came in and said, ‘What if Saddam is doing all this deception because he actually got rid of the WMD and he doesn’t want the Iranians to know?’ Now, somebody should have asked that question. I should have asked that question. Nobody did.”

I never actually expected anyone from the media to apologize for "getting it wrong" on Iraq, but it was a bit heartening to hear those who did share their comments or apologies this year. It's quite a shame that The Washington Post didn't take advantage of the opportunity to do so.

I would like to point out that as far as the "mea culpas," Stephen Hadley, Bush's national security advisor, whom Mitchell quotes above as writing “It never occurred to me or anyone else I was working with, and no one from the intelligence community or anyplace else ever came in and said, ‘What if Saddam is doing all this deception because he actually got rid of the WMD and he doesn’t want the Iranians to know?’ Now, somebody should have asked that question. I should have asked that question. Nobody did.” In this news video clip, Colin Powell in February 2001 stated that Saddam Hussein did not have any WMDs, and that "He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors." In that same video, Condi Rice says basically the same thing in July of 2001.

Hadley's question wasn't asked because until someone decided that we were going to invade Iraq, the facts as everyone knew them were that Saddam's military was in a shambles, and indeed he did not want the Iranians to know that he was unable to protect his country from an invasion. Then just a very short while later, we're supposed to believe that some half-wit named Curveball -- who basically just wanted a green card -- was the guy who knew anything you wanted to know about Iraq. Especially if very specific questions were asked, no doubt. The Bush administration, and much of congress, then ignored warnings from German Federal Intelligence Service and the British Secret Intelligence Service questioning the authenticity of Curveball's claims.

So as long as some continue to peddle the lies even as they apologize or defend their prior statements and actions -- or like the Washington Post refuse to discuss what went wrong with the media's reporting on Iraq -- the war can't really be settled. If we can't ensure full, accurate, and impartial reporting in the media (I'm talking media here, not Fox News) how can we be certain that our nation won't be led to war in the very same way again in the future?

Ten years ago this week, the United States pre-emptively attacked Iraq in a war that would last for eight years claiming an estimated 189,000 lives, costing over $2 trillion and causing untold economic and emotional devastation for the Iraqi people.

In this 2007 documentary that originally aired on Bill Moyers Journal, Moyers investigates big media’s role as cheerleader in the clamor for war in the months preceding the March 19, 2003 invasion. How did the mainstream press get it so wrong in the run-up to the Iraq War?

The story of how high officials misled the country has been told. But they couldn’t have done it on their own; they needed a compliant press, to pass on their propaganda as news and cheer them on. How did the evidence disputing the existence of weapons of mass destruction and the link between Saddam Hussein to 9-11 go largely unreported? “What the conservative media did was easy to fathom; they had been cheerleaders for the White House from the beginning and were simply continuing to rally the public behind the President — no questions asked. How mainstream journalists suspended skepticism and scrutiny remains an issue of significance that the media has not satisfactorily explored,” says Moyers. “How the administration marketed the war to the American people has been well covered, but critical questions remain: How and why did the press buy it, and what does it say about the role of journalists in helping the public sort out fact from propaganda?”

In 2004, President Bush landed on the aircraft carrier USS Lincoln wearing a flight suit and delivered a speech in front of a giant “Mission Accomplished” banner. He was hailed by media stars as a “breathtaking” example of presidential leadership in toppling Saddam Hussein. Despite profound questions over the failure to locate weapons of mass destruction and the increasing violence in Baghdad, many in the press confirmed the White House’s claim that the war was won. MSNBC’s Chris Matthews declared, “We’re all neo-cons now;” NPR’s Bob Edwards said, “The war in Iraq is essentially over;” and Fortune magazine’s Jeff Birnbaum said, “It is amazing how thorough the victory in Iraq really was in the broadest context.”

“Buying the War” includes interviews with Dan Rather, formerly of CBS; Tim Russert of Meet the Press; Bob Simon of 60 Minutes; Walter Isaacson, former president of CNN; and John Walcott, Jonathan Landay and Warren Strobel of Knight Ridder newspapers, which was acquired by The McClatchy Company in 2006.

In “Buying the War” Bill Moyers and producer Kathleen Hughes document the reporting of Walcott, Landay and Strobel, the Knight Ridder team that burrowed deep into the intelligence agencies to try and determine whether there was any evidence for the Bush Administration’s case for war. “Many of the things that were said about Iraq didn’t make sense,” says Walcott. “And that really prompts you to ask, ‘Wait a minute. Is this true? Does everyone agree that this is true? Does anyone think this is not true?’”

In the run-up to war, skepticism was a rarity among journalists inside the Beltway. Journalist Bob Simon of 60 Minutes, who was based in the Middle East, questioned the reporting he was seeing and reading. “I mean we knew things or suspected things that perhaps the Washington press corps could not suspect. For example, the absurdity of putting up a connection between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda,” he tells Moyers. “Saddam…was a total control freak. To introduce a wild card like Al Qaeda in any sense was just something he would not do. So I just didn’t believe it for an instant.”

The program analyzes the stream of unchecked information from administration sources and Iraqi defectors to the mainstream print and broadcast press, which was then seized upon and amplified by an army of pundits. While almost all the claims would eventually prove to be false, the drumbeat of misinformation about WMDs went virtually unchallenged by the media. The New York Times reported on Iraq’s “worldwide hunt for materials to make an atomic bomb,” but according to Landay, claims by the administration about the possibility of nuclear weapons were highly questionable. Yet, his story citing the “lack of hard evidence of Iraqi weapons” got little play. In fact, throughout the media landscape, stories challenging the official view were often pushed aside while the administration’s claims were given prominence. “From August 2002 until the war was launched in March of 2003 there were about 140 front page pieces in the Washington Post making the administration’s case for war,” says Howard Kurtz, the Post’s media critic. “But there was only a handful of stories that ran on the front page that made the opposite case. Or, if not making the opposite case, raised questions.”

“Buying the War” examines the press coverage in the lead-up to the war as evidence of a paradigm shift in the role of journalists in democracy and asks, four years after the invasion, what’s changed? “More and more the media become, I think, common carriers of administration statements and critics of the administration,” says the Washington Post’s Walter Pincus. “We’ve sort of given up being independent on our own.”

A full transcript of the show below the fold...

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Former Vice President Dick Cheney is probably going to hell for his role in the Iraq War, Rep. Walter Jones (R-NC) said while speaking at a Young Americans for Liberty conference in Raleigh, N.C.

"Congress will not hold anyone to blame," Jones said. " "Lyndon Johnson's probably rotting in hell right now because of the Vietnam War — and he probably needs to move over for Dick Cheney."

The remark drew applause from the audience, while Jones went on to praise Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) for helping him understand the role of the constitution and Congress when deciding whether to go to war. (Young Americans for Liberty stemmed from Paul's 2008 presidential campaign.)

Jones himself voted in favor of the war in 2003, but has expressed regret about the decision and become a vocal critic.

"Too many times in Washington nobody apologizes, especially when you send young men and women to die," he said. "We apologize if we get caught by the police driving drunk, if we have an affair, then we apologize. But never does anyone apologize for buying into a lie to send men and women to die."

If Jones' name sounds familiar, it may be because of another initiative he'd taken up: changing the name of "french fries" to "freedom fries."

The war that began March 19, 2003, was justified to the country by alarming claims that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and connections to al-Qaida terrorists—almost all of which turned out to be false. Some of the most senior officials in the U.S. government, including President Bush himself, Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, asserted these claims in public with absolute confidence, even while privately, ranking U.S. military officers and intelligence professionals were voicing their doubts. Hubris: The Selling of the Iraq War, a documentary special hosted by Rachel Maddow that will air Monday night on MSNBC at 9 p.m. provides new evidence that the dissent within the administration and military was even more profound and widespread than anybody has known until now.

David Corn writes:

"One chilling moment in the film comes in an interview with retired General Anthony Zinni, a former commander in chief of US Central Command. In August 2002, the Bush-Cheney administration opened its propaganda campaign for war with a Cheney speech at the annual Veterans of Foreign Wars convention. The veep made a stark declaration: "There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us." No doubt, he proclaimed, Saddam was arming himself with WMD in preparation for attacking the United States."

"Zinni was sitting on the stage during the speech, and in the documentary he recalls his reaction":

"It was a shock. It was a total shock. I couldn't believe the vice president was saying this, you know? In doing work with the CIA on Iraq WMD, through all the briefings I heard at Langley, I never saw one piece of credible evidence that there was an ongoing program. And that's when I began to believe they're getting serious about this. They wanna go into Iraq."

But, this is but a glimpse. There is much, much more.

The film is based on Michael Isikoff and David Corn's book, "Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War."

Also, "congratulations" are in order to David Corn. Corn is the reporter for Mother Jones magazine who broke the story of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s remarks that 47 percent of Americans “believe they are victims” is among the winners of the 64th annual George Polk Awards in Journalism.

By T. Christian Miller, ProPublica

The U.S. Department of Labor has fined a private security contractor $75,000 for failing to file timely reports on the deaths of workers in Iraq as required by law. The Sandi Group, based in Washington D.C., delayed telling the Labor department that 30 of its employees had been killed while working for the company between 2003 and 2005, according to the department.

The Sandi Group, a privately held company known for employing large numbers of Iraqis as security guards, did not return requests for comment. Since 2005 the company has won U.S. government contracts worth at least $80.9 million, according to a federal contracting database.

The fine, believed to be the largest ever levied against a single company for failing to report war zone casualties in a timely manner, is part of an enforcement crackdown that began after a ProPublica series highlighted problems with a government program designed to provide health benefits to civilian contractors working in Iraq and Afghanistan. "Timely reporting of work-related injuries, illnesses and fatalities are vitally important to protect the interests of injured workers and their families," Gary A. Steinberg, acting director of the Department of Labor office which negotiated the settlement amount with the company, said in a prepared statement.

The Labor Department is responsible for administering an obscure government program called the Defense Base Act. The act requires that contractors working overseas for the U.S. government take out specialized insurance, similar to workers compensation, to provide medical treatment for injuries sustained on the job, or to pay death benefits in the event of work-related fatalities.

The ProPublica series found the system in shambles. Insurance companies routinely delayed payments and medical treatment to injured American workers, while charging taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars for the policies. The Labor Department failed to bring enforcement actions against companies that flouted the law, even when federal administrative judges urged the agency to act. Foreign workers, such as Iraqi and Afghan translators who helped U.S. troops, frequently at risk to their own lives, often received no benefits at all.

After the series ran, the department began publishing information on contractor deaths and injuries and posted report cards showing how quickly insurance companies reported casualties. They also vowed more aggressive enforcement.

Injured workers, however, say that problems remain. Marcie Hascall Clark has battled for years to receive medical treatment and lost wage payments for her husband, who was injured in Iraq. She says she hasn't seen any improvement in a process she contends still moves too slowly. "The [Labor Department] is worse than ever," said Clark, who runs a website for injured contractors.

As of December, 3,258 civilian contract workers had been killed or died in Iraq, and another 90,000 had reported injuries.

Norman Schwarzkopf's Rule System: "Rule 13 says, okay, I've got it. When placed in command, I take charge. But what do I do? The answer is Rule 14: Do what's right. Because we all know, all of us know, basically, when placed in those circumstances, what the moral, what the ethical, what the correct thing to do is. We all know it. So, the true modern leader of today is the one that's, number one, willing to take charge, and willing to do what's right. That's the secret of leadership."

Retired U.S. general Norman Schwarzkopf died Thursday in Tampa at age 78. Known as “Stormin’ Norman,” Schwarzkopf was the commander in chief of the U.S. central command in the five-week Persian Gulf War in 1991 and was regaled for freeing Kuwait from its Iraqi occupiers. In the aftermath, Schwarzkopf was given the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President George H.W. Bush, and Queen Elizabeth II made him an honorary knight. He overcame prostate cancer almost 20 years ago, and he died Thursday from complications from pneumonia.

NYT:

Old official photographs show a medaled military mannequin, a 6-foot-3-inch 240-pounder with grim determined eyes. But they miss the gentler man who listened to Pavarotti, Willie Nelson and Bob Dylan; who loved hunting, fishing and ballet; and, like any soldier, called home twice a week from the war zone.

Herbert Norman Schwarzkopf Jr. was born on Aug. 22, 1934, in Trenton, one of three children of the man whose name he shared and the former Ruth Bowman. At 18, he dropped the Jr. and his first name but kept the initial. His father, New Jersey’s first state police superintendent, investigated the 1932 Lindbergh kidnapping; he was also a West Point graduate, fought in World Wars I and II, became a major general and trained Iran’s national police in the 1940s.

As a boy, General Schwarzkopf attended Bordentown Military Institute near Trenton. But from 1946 to 1950 he lived in Iran, Switzerland, Germany and Italy with his father. Fluent in French and German at 17, he enrolled at Valley Forge Military Academy in Wayne, Pa., played football and was a champion debater.

At West Point, he was on the football and wrestling teams and sang in the choir. He loved history and dreamed of leading men in battle. “He saw himself as Alexander the Great,” recalled Gen. Leroy Suddath, his old roommate, “and we didn’t laugh when he said it.” In 1956, he graduated 43rd in a class of 480.

On Jan. 17, 1991, a five-month buildup called Desert Shield became Operation Desert Storm as allied aircraft attacked Iraqi bases and Baghdad government facilities. The six-week aerial campaign climaxed with a massive ground offensive, routing the Iraqis from Kuwait in 100 hours before U.S. officials called a halt.

While Schwarzkopf later avoided the public second-guessing by academics and think tank experts over the ambiguous outcome of the first Gulf War and its impact on the second Gulf War, he told The Washington Post in 2003, "You can't help but ... with 20/20 hindsight, go back and say, `Look, had we done something different, we probably wouldn't be facing what we are facing today.'"

Schwarzkopf is survived by his wife, Brenda, and their three children: Cynthia, Jessica and Christian.

America has been at war for over a decade now, with millions of soldiers having seen death and dying up close in Afghanistan and Iraq. But most Americans, watching comfortably on their TVs and computers, witness mostly to statistics, stump speeches, and “expert” rhetoric, don’t get what’s really going on there. Bill talks to Karl Marlantes — a highly-decorated Vietnam veteran, Rhodes Scholar, author, and PTSD survivor — about what we on the insulated outside need to understand about the minds and hearts of our modern warriors. Marlantes shares with Bill intimate stories about how his battlefield experiences both shaped and nearly destroyed him, even after returning to civilian life.

“’Thou shalt not kill’ is a tenet you just do not violate, and so all your young life, that’s drilled into your head. And then suddenly, you’re 18 or 19 and they’re saying, ‘Go get ‘em and kill for your country.’ And then you come back and it’s like, ‘Well, thou shalt not kill’ again. Believe me, that’s a difficult thing to deal with,” Marlantes tells Bill. “You take a young man and put him in the role of God, where he is asked to take a life — that’s something no 19-year-old is able to handle.”

Full transcript after the jump...

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[Photograph: Jessica Rinaldi/Reuters]

Another legal victory for Occupy Wall Street protesters: A federal judge has ruled that the NYPD failed to sufficiently warn Occupy Wall Street protesters against walking on the roadway of the Brooklyn bridge in October, resulting in the arrest of roughly 700 people.

After reviewing video footage from both parties, Judge Jed S. Rakoff of the federal district court in Manhattan sided with the protesters, clearing the way for a class-action lawsuit.

The above video discusses abuses suffered by credentialed members of the media at the hands of the New York City Police Department. The number of journalists arrested has been called into question this week,
after Police Commissioner Ray Kelly and Paul Browne, deputy commissioner for public information gave an interview where they tried to rewrite Occupy Wall Street history.:

[NYPD Commissioner Ray] Kelly also said the NYPD was unfairly criticized over its removal of protesters from Zuccotti Park last year, saying the people who were arrested had defied legal orders to leave the park and were pushing through police lines after monitoring department radios to learn what officers were planning.

Paul Browne, the deputy commissioner for public information, who accompanied Kelly to the interview, added that only one journalist was arrested during the operation, despite stories to the contrary, which he called “a total myth.” Occupy Wall Street protesters were forging press credentials in an effort to get through the police lines, he added, but that doesn’t mean actual reporters were arrested.

So if you believe that the NYPD targets media persons during protest arrests or that they did so at any of the Occupy evictions, you probably believe in the tooth fairy, Big Foot, and think that the moon is made of swiss cheese.

Of the NYPD's "Stop and Frisk" policy:

“We’re saving lives,” Kelly said, “mostly young men of color.”

Is that what's going on in this video? Sure, and Santa's going to bring me a pink unicorn with glitter for Christmas this year. Time for Ray Kelly to retire, and take his fairy tales with him.

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Iraq war veteran Scott Olsen was hit in the head with a beanbag round during an Occupy Oakland protest last October, says Olsen's attorney. The shot fractured Olsen's skull.

Mark Martel, Olsen’s attorney, said he is is preparing to file a claim against Oakland.

Via:

Martel said he was e-mailed confirmation of the beanbag shot two weeks ago by an Oakland Police Department investigator who is looking into the department's handling of the Occupy protests.

The attorney said videos showing Olsen, a former Marine and a member of Iraq Veterans Against the War, during the protest indicate that whoever shot him was within 30 feet.

"Because it was in close distance, it suggests this was an intentional shot to the head," Martel said.

Olsen was hit during a confrontation between officers and demonstrators on Oct. 25, hours after officers removed the Occupy Oakland encampment from the plaza in front of Oakland's City Hall. The department requested help from at least 17 other law enforcement agencies to evict the camp and respond to the protest that followed.

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Scott Olsen, the Iraq War veteran injured at the Occupy Oakland encampment on Oct. 25th has since been released from the hospital and gave his first interview yesterday.

In the interview Scott talks about the challenges he faces after being hit in the head by a projectile at Occupy Oakland, specifically the traumatic brain injury he sustained and the weeks of therapy it took for him to regain his speech. In the video it is evident that he still struggles a bit with speaking. But Olsen states that he is doing much better than he was.

Olsen also addresses the city of Oakland and the Oakland Police Department who are investigating the incident, stating that he is waiting to see what they are going to say about themselves in their own investigations. He has not been interviewed by anyone investigating for the police department, nor has he heard anything at all from the District Attorney's office.

Olsen also conveys at end of the interview that the Occupy Movement was intended to be peaceful and should remain that way, that by working together and being open with one another would solve most of the problems that the movement faces with bureaucracy.

Scott looks great, and it's obvious that he has worked very hard to regain his speech. He also has scars that are hidden underneath a bandana in the video. We wish him all the best, and a speedy, complete recovery.

You can follow the full story online here.

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